The scene shifted. Horses galloped across the room; dust clouds rose, nearly choking her in the verisimilitude of the illusion. It was as though she crouched under a small square canopy of ceiling in the middle of the immense plain.
Now there were cattle, wild-eyed, with tossing horns, bellowing, thundering in an unbroken sea across the screens, charging at Flora out of the wall, pouring past her on left and right. She screamed, shut her eyes, and ran blindly to the wall, groping for the switch.
The uproar subsided. Flora gasped in relief, her head humming. She felt faint, dizzy; she had to lie down—Everything was going black around her; the glowing walls swirled, fading. Flora sank to the floor.
Later—perhaps a few minutes, maybe hours—she had no way of knowing—Flora sat up. She looked out across an infinite vista of tile floor, which swept away to the distant horizon in all directions as far as the eye could see; and over all that vast plain, hollow-eyed women crouched at intervals of fifteen feet, in endless numbers, waiting.
Flora stared into the eyes of the nearest reflection. It stared back, a stranger. She moved her head quickly, to try to catch a glimpse of the next woman—but no matter how fast she moved, the nearer woman anticipated her, interposing her face between Flora and all the others. Flora turned; a cold-eyed woman guarded this rank, too.
"Please," Flora heard herself pleading. "Please, please—"
She bit her lip, eyes shut. She had to get hold of herself. These were only mirrors—she knew that. Only mirrors. The other women—they were mere reflections. Even the hostile ones who hid the others—they were herself, mirrored in the walls.
She opened her eyes. She knew there were joints in the glassy wall; all she had to do was find them, and the illusion of the endless plain would collapse. There—that thin black line, like a wire stretched from floor to ceiling—that was a corner of the room. She was not lost in an infinitude of weeping women on a vast plain; she was right there, in her own apartment—alone. She turned, finding the other corners. They were all there, all visible; she knew what they were....
But why did they continue to look like wires, setting apart the squares of floor, each with its silent, grieving occupant...?